Nvidia preps Android-Tegra designs for "pipe and flight"

Jen-Hsun Huang has confirmed that Nvidia is prepping a “very large number” of second-generation Tegra-Android designs for imminent “pipe and flight.”

“On the second-generation [Tegra], we were able to expand to focus a lot of our energy around Android. And although it made sense for the first-generation Androids to use available phone processors, the follow-on generations of Android are really going to go after performance,” Huang explained during a recent company earnings call.

“[For example], iPhones are out there, the iPhone 4G is coming, the iPad is obviously a revolutionary product. The bar is pretty high for all of the mobile players, and so they need a processor that can keep up with the A4.

“If not, be much better than what the A4 can do because they have to take on the leader in the space…With iPad and next-generation smartphones, resolution’s a huge issue, and you need to have very snappy graphics with a 10×7 display, if not even bigger by that, even higher resolution than that.”

According to Huang, the second-gen Tegra is “doing incredibly well”

due to the overwhelming success of Google’s mobile Android OS.

“So we’re going to come to market with the second-generation Tegra with the third-generation Android. And so that’s our focus now…I think it comes together at the end of the year, and we’ve talked about smartphones, we’ve talked about tablets.

“We have a very large number of designs in pipe and flight, and so we’re looking forward to starting in third quarter and fourth quarter, many design wins to show up in production.”